And then, of course, there’s the Zwischenräume, and it’s here, right here, right now.

It’s technically an “art project,” so it’s not some prototype for a robot some company may have in the works for the future. But what it does is hide behind walls and pummel through so that it can check what’s on the other side. It sounds interesting, yet beyond creepy and freaky at the same time.

Click to View Embedded Video Clip

The following is how the artist describes the Zwischenräume:

The installation embeds a group of autonomous robots into the walls of a gallery. They punch holes through the walls to inspect what’s outside, signal each other, and conspire. As if the walls had ears and a hammer to pierce holes for their eyes to see.

I just think it’s a poetic way of describing a wall-punching robot that knows no boundaries.

[io9 via Geekologie via Dvice]

Vlach lost her left eye in an accident back in 2005. Ever since then, she’s been asking for help and looking into possible ways of regaining her sight. She now has a tentative design for a digital cam-equipped prosthetic eye, which she hopes will be able to take 720p video at best, has a wireless transmitter, 3x optical zoom and MPEG-4/H.264 recording, among other things.

But becoming a cyborg costs money, and that’s where you come in. Whereas Spence fitted his eye socket with a glowing LED to gain publicity (and thus help), Vlach chose a more current route: Kickstarter.

Vlach is hoping to raise $15,000 (USD) by August 3.  As always, backers will get freebies depending on the amount they pledge. Visit her Kickstarter page and pledge if you want to be part of her groundbreaking project.

I’m not sure if Spence has already succeeded with his project, but if not it would be awesome if he and Vlach could team up and form a superhero team share information and promote their common goal as one. Mr. & Ms. Eyeborg – imagine the publicity that would generate!

[via Engadget]

For starters, Tommaso envisions the MacBook 2020 as being the first “molecularly manufactured laptop.” That is, the machine would be made out of “scalable micro-lattice nanomaterials” which would literally allow you to shrink the MacBook to fit into your pocket when you want to.

At full-size, the MacBook 2020 would offer a design which breaks into two separate tablet surfaces. This would be achieved thanks to magnetic hinges and a wireless connection between its two halves. Maybe you and a friend can share the same computer with this unusual split-component design, or you could use one screen for input and the other one for displaying content on the other side of the room.

That’s not all. The tablet-like surfaces would include a complex set of layers which provide 3D image viewing and capture, tactile feedback and unlimited power through a photovoltaic panel too. It even would have a “shapeshifter” coating on top which would allow the MacBook to change finishes from matte to glossy or from metal to plastic. Sweet. Sign me up! Can I get that for my car, too?

Instead of today’s LCD or LED displays, the MacBook 2020 would have holographic screen surfaces, capable of both displaying and scanning 3D objects.

You could then manipulate and interact with 3D objects in real time using a Kinect-like gesture control system.

While this all sounds pretty far-fetched, one only has to think back to how primitive computers and mobile phones looked 10 to 20 years ago to realize how far and how quickly technological breakthroughs occur. And Tommaso is quick to point out how many of his ideas are grounded in technologies which are currently in development, or in their early stages in the consumer market already. While I’m not certain we’ll move quite as fast as 2020, I think most of the technologies seen here will eventually find their way to market in one form or another. Except maybe the shape-shifter part – but I’m hoping I’ll be proven wrong.

[via coroflot]

The clock will be put into a cave inside a mountain and will have five chambers that people can visit. The five chambers will celebrate certain milestones in the clock’s life. The chambers will be for 1, 10, 100, 1,000, and 10,000-year anniversaries of the clock, and each will have a special something inside that the clock will activate. The builders are only going to design the animations for the first and tenth anniversaries and are leaving the later dates to future generations.

The year-one chamber will have an orrery that will have the planets and other things to celebrate the first century of man in space. The clock will have a hand that moves once per year and one that moves once per century. It has a bell system that will let the clock activate a different chime each day for 10,000 years. Epic.

For more details on the project, head on over to the 10,000 Year Clock web site.

Here’s the video:

Click to View Embedded Video Clip

Isn’t it funny, yet inevitable, that our visions of the future are always constrained by what’s in our present? For example, why are the interfaces so reliant on touchscreens? Did you see how inconvenient it was for the mom to type on her bathroom mirror and set up the map in her car? We already have voice-recognition software like Dragon Dictation; I’d like to think that the future will have more of that. Why type when you can dictate? Hell, KITT exchanged witty banter with Michael Knight.

What about wild ideas like controlling computers with your eyes, or with your thoughts? Or phones that don’t look like transparent iPhones? What about a phone that’s embedded in our ears and eyes? Where are the holograms? And where are the actual keyboards?

But I may be asking too much of Corning, because the video is an advertisement more than anything else. And as I said the company does have a few neat ideas, especially when it comes to what they know best – tough glass, large seamless displays, appliances with multipurpose glass parts – but I’d like to think that the future of computing is not just more of what we have now, but something better.

[via Emergent Futures]

That’s the title of Teasdale’s presentation, which by the way he delivered at an International Game Developers’ Association (IGDA) meeting last week. So when he said “we aren’t all going to die”, he’s talking about game developers. The rest of us are still definitely going to die. Below is Teasdale’s presentation. It’s a shame it’s filled with adult language, because his message should also be heard by gamers and “market analysts” alike.

Click to View Embedded Video Clip

Yes! America! That’s all well and good for developers, but what this does mean for us gamers? For me, this is yet another sign for us to accept digital downloads as being a significant part of gaming experience, whether we like it or not. Personally I’d rather have a physical copy of my games, and I get depressed thinking of downloading tens of gigabytes with my current Internet connection. I’m also concerned with how publishers will handle ownership of digital games in the future, if and when it becomes the main method of distribution. But my main concern is that if the future of games becomes download only, people like me who have slow Internet connections will be left out even though we have the money to pay for the games. It’s like if the road from my house to the game store suddenly became a factor in my being able to purchase games.

Digital downloads may have many benefits for developers – it combats piracy and eliminates used game sales, costs less to distribute games and it offers a continuous stream of revenue and an opportunity to increase customer loyalty with DLC – I’m just not sure how it will play out for us gamers.

[via GoNintendo]

Wait what the –

It’s a dead robo-bird! Artist/illustrator/futurechologist Justin Chase Black, more respectfully addressed as Mr. ThrowingChicken, recently finished the awesome looking  Creatures of the Mechazoic Era, a series of sculptures that look like fossilized remains from a time yet to come.

According to monsieur ThrowingChicken, “Over the past several months I have been gathering reference photography, gathering animal bones, doing sketches, talking with geologists and fossil experts, working with fellow artists, building the bucks, making the molds and pulling the casts. This series offers a little look at what we might be digging up millions of years from now, and it just might be the remains of technology that has yet to be created.”

Who’s creeped out by the android? *raises hand*  Who wants more Mechazoic fossils? See a few more pics at ThrowingChicken’s deviantART page.

[via Metafilter]

Matsuda’s stunning video clip was created as part of his Masters’ program at the Bartlett School of Architecture, and envisions a future in which augmented reality has embedded itself into our everyday lives, transforming the way we interact with our living and working spaces. A wondrous world of heads-up displays show contextual information for everything from dishwasher status, to tea kettle temperature updates, to an inventory of the items in your fridge. Oh yeah, and lots and lots of ads.

Click to View Embedded Video Clip

I, for one do not want my kitchen walls covered with banner ads – even if they are targeted to my midnight cravings for Krispy Kremes and Grape Tang (unless Kozmo was still in business and could deliver those items in 30 minutes or less.)

Ah, the future’s so bright, you’ve gotta hope the AdBlock Plus guys are working on an augmented reality version of their app.

[via bldgblog via The Awesomer]

This unassuming looking prototype might not look like much, but it’s actually the EZ-REM-0001, the very first remote control to require no batteries at all. Power to the remote control is generated using the tiny vibrations caused by pressing the buttons on the face of the remote. The device uses a combination of a sound vibration power generation device, an RF remote control, and a specialized power supply that can drive the circuit with very little power. This new technology was developed as a joint-venture between Japan’s NEC Electronics and Soundpower.

While this might not seem like much, the notion of powering your electronic gadgets simply by using the power generated through button presses is pretty groundbreaking. Perhaps someday we’ll see other devices that can convert your physical movements into renewable energy for electronics. While I don’t know if vibrations will ever generate enough power to send radio waves, you might someday juice up simple electronic devices by simply pressing the power button.

Cool stuff, Maynard. Very cool stuff, indeed.

[via Tech-On!]

Organic Light Emitting Diodes are starting to emerge not only in flat-panel displays, but numerous prototypes of OLED lighting fixtures are starting to rear their heads. The great thing about OLED is not only that it is self-illuminating and eco-friendly, but that it’s not a point-source of light. Instead, OLED can be built into flexible panels and produced in specialized shapes, sizes and colors – providing a wonderful ambient glow. There are even transparent oled panels that you can see through, but that can still generate bright ambient lighting. Philips has even made some amazing interactive lighting fixtures using their new Lumiblade OLED technology.

Check out the gallery below to see a variety of prototype fixtures that use OLEDs to generate light.

In addition to Philips, there are many companies working on OLED lighting concepts, including GE, OSRAM, Siemens, Visionox, Samsung, and others – and it’s only a matter of time before we start to see mass-produced commercial lighting fixtures that use the technology. I see a bright future ahead of us.

[via OLED Info]

I’m sure there are lots of things that he knows that we common folks don’t. But to support his claims, Kurzweil, whose future self sent the picture below, also mentions recent breakthroughs in biotechnology, such as artificial pancreases for diabetics and neural implants for Parkinson’s patients.

Kurzweil – whose future future self sent the picture below, I don’t know how or why - also pulled the ol’ computer analogy: “Our phones now perform tasks we wouldn’t have dreamed possible 20 years ago. When I was a student in 1965, my university’s only computer cost £7 million and was huge.  Today your mobile phone is a million times less expensive and a thousand times more powerful. That’s a billion times more capable for the same price.”

Using the Law of Accelerating Returns – which btw is his own theory – Kurzweil estimates that “we will experience another billion-fold increase in technological capability for the same cost in the next 25 years.” Dammit. I wasn’t planning to buy a new laptop till 2030! How expensive will a Core Quadrillion MacBook be by then? Kurzweil, whose future future future self drew the picture below, also mentions a bit of NSFW stuff that I’d rather not share with you.

What do you think of Krangzweil Kurzweil’s predictions? You can read his article here if you want. Our technological progress has really been exponential, so yeah, maybe he’s right.  But let’s not forget that despite all of our fancy gadgets and Gundam statues, we’re not really progressing a lot in other aspects: lots of people are still suffering in one way or another, and we still bicker and fight over lots of things.

If Kurzweil’s 2029 ever comes true, I hope it’s not just the rich or privileged who reap the advantage of this supposedly godlike technology. I’m telling you, as a Third World gamer and techie who spends most of his time browsing the net and reading about First World developments, sometimes it feels like you folks are already in the future, because I sure as hell don’t see or experience a lot of the things that I read about. Also, I’m finding it very hard to be dramatic and serious with Krangzweil around.

[via DVICE, Kurzminators via faceinhole]

Mundie’s sample office setting eschewed the keyboard, mouse and even the monitor. His desk was a multi-touch surface computer, and the walls were monitors as well, capable of displaying “a virtual window or collection of digital photos to a corkboard of sticky notes or various workspaces.” That’s nice, except I hope that in the future we’ll still have real views and not “virtual windows”. Mundie also showcased a Project Natal-like tech, wherein he put himself in the middle of an architectural demo. Imagine being able to see and walk through a life-size model of your house before it’s actually built. The future is going to be awesome. To those who can afford it anyway.

[via Crave UK]

The quote continues: ‘The system might know the requirements for various tasks in its repertoire, and it may try to perform those tasks to verify functionality.”  So at the very least, these future robots could be thinking, sensing and moving about as they are being built, testing their parts. Which could include what, guns, missiles, lasers?

DARPA recently held a convention (pdf) of evil, traitorous mad scientists to help with SELF. Well I think that this is future future technology.  First of all you’d either need to have versatile parts or a factory with all the parts that robots need for it to be able to build itself based on its programmed tasks. And second, I’m scared. Dammit why can’t DARPA setup programs that make us feel better?

[via The Register via Crave]

That’s just an Aquos LCD TV, not a picture of the LCD display in question. Sorry. But what I can share with you is that the new “Multi-Primary-Color Technology” is able to display 99% of the “real surface colors” thanks to two other color filters: cyan and yellow. Normally, more color filters also means larger power consumption, but Sharp claims that the 5-color setup compensates for that because it’s able to use the display’s backlight more efficiently.

It will take some time before the technology finds its way down to consumer products, but the 60.5-in, 1920 x 1080 full HD prototype is already on display at the ongoing Society for Information Display (SID) 2009. I bet it’s showing footage of roses cruising on a sea using brass plated boats.

[via Gadget Venue]

Arkin argues that “not only can robots be programmed to behave more ethically on the battlefield, they may actually be able to respond better than human soldiers.” Now I know that if we do end up having autonomous armed robots, their decision-making must be equally good, if not better, than ours. Surely coming up with such a software is no mean feat, but I’m more worried about the possibility of evildoers coming up with an evil program, which is much easier to write (i.e. a program that instructs robots to kill everything they see).

[via Discovery via BotJunkie]

As you can see, SixthSense is made up of a camera that tracks the color-marked fingers, and a projector to display whatever relevant information the system digs up. What’s not in the picture is of course the computer itself, in this case a “mobile computing device” installed with software that analyzes the gestures and the objects captured by the camera, so that it can respond and provide the appropriate information. What sort of information? Let’s start with a little trick: if Mistry traces a small circle on his wrist using his index finger, SixthSense will project a watch onto his wrist:

There are many other gestures that the system recognizes – drawing a magnifying glass projects a map application, while drawing the ‘@’ symbol lets the user check his/her email. SixthSense can also interact with everyday objects, like in the image below where it reveals that the flight which the user has a ticket to is delayed.

And here we see SixthSense providing Amazon’s rating for a book on the book’s cover itself:

SixthSense can also pull up video from the internet:

That right there is so awesome. SO AWESOME. As you can see, SixthSense is like a portable, more intuitive, multi-touch version of Google. As Pranav Mistry says on his website: “SixthSense frees information from its confines by seamlessly integrating it with reality, and thus making the entire world your computer.”

Click to View Embedded Video Clip

And the best part? All this automagical stuff we’ve seen was achieved on a prototype that costs only $350 USD to build. There are netbooks that are more expensive than this system. If SixthSense becomes mass-produced or integrated into computing devices, I’d imagine prices will only go south of that figure. SixthSense really has the potential to make digital information as accessible as possible, the same way that cellular phones made communication instant and affordable.

[via Pop Sci]

Carnegie Mellon University grad student Chris Harrison and CS professor Scott Hudson have developed a tactile interface that lets you actually feel and press virtual buttons that emerge from a touchscreen. The prototype uses a combination of rear-projected images, infrared sensors and a layer of flexible latex from which the buttons rise and fall.

A custom cut acrylic layer behind the buttons gives them their shapes, and air is pumped into and out of the chambers behind the buttons to automatically change the button states as the images change.

The system is capable of detecting more than one simultaneous press using readily available infrared multi-touch technology, and can even figure out how hard you’re pressing on the buttons by monitoring air pressure. To see the system in action, check out this video clip:

Click to View Embedded Video Clip

While the prototype version is clearly not practical or cost-effective for real-world use, the overall concept is really cool, and I’d love to see them figure out a way to miniaturize the technology so it could be crammed into a mobile device some day.

[via Technology Review]

Whatever his cause, Spence and his partners sure know how to gain mad publicity. By installing a red LED into his prosthetic eye, they not only proved that installing an electronic device and its power source into such a small space is feasible, now Spence also looks like one of the Borg, or a Terminator. He says that “this is every adult male’s fantasy.” To which I would have to say “Ummm…no.” But he really does look awesome.

The Canadian’s quest for a camera-eye has been widely publicized; however, the Eyeborg Project really don’t have much to show save for a prototype housing for the camera. This video from the Eyeborg Project introduces us to the people behind the team. It’s actually pretty crazy and funny; but of course we should expect nothing less from a guy who decides to pop in an LED into his eye socket.

Click to View Embedded Video Clip

Although personally I’m okay with my plain old unenhanced eyes, I really hope the project succeeds. You never know, someday blind people may have the option to install tiny video cameras into their bodies and have it wired to their brains so they can “see”. For more details – including an Ashton Kutcher tweet – check out the Eyeborg Project’s website and their blog.

[via ABC News]

Now, thanks to sculptor Andy Hill of Electro Art Works, you can own your very own one-of-a-kind ray gun. Each of Andy’s creations has a Buck Rogers-esque retro-future style, and is handmade from a mix of recycled and found objects.

And while none of these ray guns contain any circuitry that could actually blow up a planet, most of them do have a spring-loaded trigger to make you FEEL powerful.

Each one dons a perfectly appropriate name like the Leviton Vaporizer, The Exterminator or my personal favorite, the Buzzkill 5000.

Each one is a unique work of art, complete with a backstory about the battles and far-off planets they’ll be used on in the distant future (…the year 2000 – I just had to say that).

Some of the models shown above have already been sold, but a couple are currently available for about $300 to $350 (USD), a pretty good deal considering your plans for interplanetary domination.

You can check out all of Andy Hill’s retro-futuristic ray guns, as well as a bunch of of really cool robot sculptures at Electro Art Works.

The 49-foot tall Veggie Gigantor Top Hat Asimo will be featured in the 120th Rose Bowl Parade, along with the Prairie View A&M University Marching Band. Since 2008 also marks Honda’s 50th anniversary of US operations, a Honda Super Cub motorcycle (the first model sold in the U.S.) will also parade, and be ignored, alongside ASIMO.

I hope they discover Gundamium soon, because carnations just won’t do.